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Musical Structure, Musical Nation, C. 1800–1950

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Musical Structure, Musical Nation, C. 1800–1950 6 Musical Structure, Musical Nation, c. 1800–1950 While the Qajar Dynasty would eventually reunite most Safavid territory under their control by the very end of the eighteenth century, the first writings about Qajar music apparently come somewhat later, in the mid-nineteenth century. And even the earliest of these writings document new concepts of musical structure that would ultimately underpin the emergence of the radif-dastgah tradition. Early writings about music associated with the Qajar court describe idiosyncratic models of procedural musical structure. They alternately referred to twelve dast- gah or four shadd, which might also be called dastgah. But in both cases writ- ings described a unique, separate procedure of musical development that defined each shadd or dastgah.1 There was not one shared superstructure unifying the organization of all dastgah: each one required a separate explanation of how it worked, from the beginning of a performance to the very end. While authors ini- tially described varying numbers and terminology for these performance-based structures, seven dastgah eventually become a common framework for this pro- cedural concept of musical structure. Descriptions of seven dastgah suggest the musical procedures of each dastgah could relate specifically to how instruments were played. Following this logic, a text dated 1912 from an observer named Mirza Shafi Khan described the melodic progression of seven different dastgah in terms of different tunings for strings and changing hand positions over the duration of a performance. This referred to how the music could be played on the tar (tār), a specific long-necked, fretted lute.2 However many dastgah there were in the early to mid-nineteenth century, musicians took the seven dastgah of the late nineteenth century and made changes to this particular tradition in the twentieth century. It is the seven dastgah of the 105 106 chapter 6 late Qajar court and their transformation in the twentieth century that define the radif-dastgah tradition as musicologists understand it today. Even musicians with the most direct connections to the earliest practitioners of the seven dastgah in the nineteenth century were engaged in a music tradition steeped in modern musical change. The centerpiece of the radif-dastgah tradition as musicians and scholars dis- cuss it today is the radif: a specific collection of monophonic melodic material that provides the structure for the tradition’s theory, pedagogy, and performance practice. The melodic material of the radif ranges from short motivic fragments to melodies with longer multisectional development, yet all of these different musical pieces and motives have come to be referred to individually as gusheh. The modern radif and current Iranian music theory subdivides the gusheh of the radif into twelve or thirteen subdivisions: subsets of gusheh that are thought to have modal affinity with one another. The primary term for these subsets of gusheh is dastgah, though smaller subsets of gusheh may be referred to as dastgah or avaz. Seven dastgah comprised the original designated structures of the tradition, with smaller avaz-dastgah being designated somewhat later in the twentieth century. Currently musicians vary in their distinction between the original seven and the additional four to five avaz-dastgah. Some treat the origi- nal seven dastgah as primary and the avaz-dastgah as secondary and this is often where the question of how many avaz-dastgah exist depends on the particu- lar radif or performer. Others make no distinction between the original seven and the additional, smaller avaz subdivisions, typically referring to all of them equally as twelve dastgah. The relationship between the gusheh and the dastgah is complex and different musicians and music scholars have described it in different ways. In keeping with the basic premise of the twelve maqam, one common approach to analysis used by musicians is to position each dastgah as an abstract modal framework or scale, and to describe the gusheh associated with each dastgah as being an individual melodic manifestation of a specific dastgah’s modality or scale. Within this analysis, each of the seven dastgah and four to five avaz-dastgah represent distinct modal frame- works and each gusheh consists of small musical ideas and larger compositions that express features of the modal framework to which it is assigned. There is some disagreement, however, on how to represent exactly the essential parameters for these distinct modal frameworks. For example, figures 8 and 9 show two different possibilities, one documented by the ethnomusicologist Jean During according to the teachings of Nur ‛Ali Borumand (1906–1976) and the other documented by the ethnomusicologist Lloyd Miller according to the teachings of Dariush Safvat (1928–2013).3 Each scholar’s analysis shows how two different masters of the tradi- tion described slightly different ideas about what constituted the essential features for modal frameworks in the tradition. The names of the original seven dastgah Figure 8. Modal interpretation of the dastgah by Jean During based on the radif of Nur ʿAli Borumand are Shur (shūr), Mahur (māhūr), Homayun (homāyūn), Chahargah (chahārgāh), Segah (segāh), Nava (navā), and Rast-Panjgah (rāst-panjgāh). Of the avaz-dastgah, Bayat-i Isfahan (bayāt-i iṣfahān) is derived from a set of gusheh that originally belonged within the dastgah of Homayun. Dashti (dashtī), Abu ‛Ata (abū ‛aṭā’), Bayat-i Tork (bayāt-i tork), and Afshari (afshārī) are based on distinct sections of gusheh taken from the dastgah of Shur. One additional avaz, Bayat-i Kord (bayāt-i kord) may be added to the avaz of Shur, or simply counted as a section of Shur. Figure 9. Modal interpretation of the dastgah by Lloyd Miller based on the teachings of Dariush Safvat The complexities of defining distinct modalities for the dastgah and avaz-dast- gah extend from the gusheh themselves, which have varying amounts of commit- ment to a single, shared modal framework when organized within their constituent dastgah. The later designation of the avaz-dastgah extended in part from melodic sections of the original seven dastgah having a degree of modal independence from their source dastgah. The discrepancy in the number of avaz-dastgah extends from disagreements about whether or not four or five distinct modal frameworks can be extracted from the dastgah of Shur. Musical Structure, Musical Nation 109 Figure 10. Examples of gusheh that exhibit modal independence according to Jean During While the numbers of notes in each modality vary in During’s interpreta- tion of Borumand, Miller and Safvat represent all dastgah and avaz as existing within a set octave framework. Additionally, these models of modality in the system disagree on how to define the tonic ( ) of Shur, Abu ‛Ata, Dashti, Homa- yun, and Segah. These two interpretations also represent Homayun’s relationship with Isfahan differently, with During’s analysis reflecting different modal param- eters for each one, and Miller maintaining they still share the same essential modal framework. Though there is variation in how musicians and scholars interpret modality in the radif-dastgah tradition, the growing definition and independence of the avaz-dastgah in the twentieth century did facilitate more consistency in utilizing distinct modalities in performance. Even with this adjustment, however, there were still individual gusheh that maintained strong modal independence from the seven larger dastgah in which they appear (see figure 10). While some dastgah contain more modally independent gusheh than others, musicians and scholars consider modulation an inherent part of each dastgah. Shur notably contains less modulation than the rest of the dastgah.4 This is likely because large sections of Shur were converted into avaz-dastgah, thus removing large sections of Shur that would have constituted multiple significant modulations. Despite the modal diversity in the gusheh, teaching and understanding the dastgah and avaz-dastgah as overarching modalities that provide the dominant modal definition in the system are quite common. Conversely, a framework of performance that emphasizes the more complex procedural aspects of the original seven dastgah remains at the core of musicians’ conceptions of the fully authen- tic Iranian music tradition. Thus, traditional Iranian music in its most authentic manifestations of the late twentieth century still emphasized the melodic idiosyn- 110 chapter 6 crasy of the individual dastgah. If a musician or a group of musicians with a singer wanted to perform traditional Iranian music in its most authentic form, it would be the radif-dastgah tradition following a detailed procedural model: they would take one particular dastgah and perform the gusheh of it in a fairly set order, with varying degrees of improvisation on the different types of gusheh. This continued emulation of the radif-dastgah tradition’s earliest manifestations has maintained an emphasis on each dastgah’s idiosyncratic use of pitch in the course of ongoing melodic development even as notions of systematic modality have become a stan- dard part of the tradition. Within the modal diversity of the gusheh, musicians and scholars locate dast- gah modality primarily in the gusheh that comprise the first section of a dastgah performance, referred to as the introduction or daramad (darāmad). The dast- gah and avaz-dastgah all have a certain number of gusheh that are performed/ improvised upon first in a performance for the daramad. Most gusheh of the daramad are simply called daramad and then numbered to indicate their order in performance (first daramad, second daramad, and so on). Other gusheh may be considered part of the daramad and the gusheh called Kereshmeh (kereshmeh) is one of the most common gusheh to be included as part of this introductory section. While some are improvised upon more than others what the gusheh of the daramad have in common is their use of a specific, consistent modal range. As the performance continues, gusheh will move away from this range, both in terms of moving higher in range and in terms of modulation.
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